Aesthetics and Economy

Automation is replacing white-collar office work and non-dexterous manual work, causing major structural change in the job market. As advanced economies shift from a post-industrial to an auto-industrial model, all kinds of routine work is being replaced by machines. Mid-range job opportunities are shrinking, and labor markets are polarizing. Demand for dexterous service work nevertheless remains strong, as does demand for abstract labor working with patterns rather than with rules or procedures. Design is a mid-tier occupation that is growing rather than declining. " Design " is also a metaphor for abstract labor of all kinds; it exemplifies work that is creative, innovative, problem-solving, and reliant on judgment rather than rules. Heightened demand for abstract labor reflects the evolving nature of capitalist economies. The contribution of invention, ingenuity and imagination to the creation of economic value continues to expand. The auto-industrial era is coeval with design capitalism ; together they represent a key dimension of future economics.

As a conceptual tool, the Artist’s Meta-Praxis depicts commonalities and amplifies profound connections between artistic action and the art of entrepreneurial action. The framework is presented as a step towards empowering arts students for the complexities of effective entrepreneurial action by identifying and ordering the scope of knowledge and skills artists need for entrepreneurial success. Further, the model demonstrates how entrepreneurship education and training can be integrated into higher education arts programs.

This Chapter from 'Ends Meet' is focused on the fashion boutique as a site of cultural exchange, and more broadly on the 'aesthetic economy' of fashion. The chapter explores the ways in which commercial and semi-commercial spaces act as nexus for cultural intermediaries and the boutique as a space of imagination, initiation and  transformation.

Aesthetic theorists often interpret and understand works of art through the social and political context that creates and inspires the work. The recent economic recessions, and the accompanying austerity measures in many European countries, provide an interesting test case for this contextual understanding. Economists debate whether or not spending on entertainment and arts drops during times of recession and austerity. Some economists assume that spending will decline in times of austerity, but others point to evidence that spending on creative arts and entertainment remains steady and even increases during a recession because of the relief and escapism that the arts provide. Tax incentives and production rights are often given to filmmakers in the United States; in hopes that such projects will enliven a local economy and provide work for a local creative community. In the context of recent austerity measures in Greece and Spain, new and creative ways for members of the arts community to bring about new projects, and fund them in ways that critique political leadership, have emerged. Following Richard Wollheim’s classic aesthetic theory of “criticism as retrieval,” we should be mindful of the cultural values that are at stake in the creativity-culture market now being created. In any case, some scholars estimate that austerity measures in many countries will last until 2020, giving us ample opportunity to be even more “creative” with both financial incentives and artistic achievements.
Keywords: Austerity, Cultural Economy, Creative Class, Tax Incentives, Aesthetics, Microtheatres, Entertainment

One route to understanding how the contemporary moving image makes sense of the current state of finance capital is to look at the emergence of neoliberalism as a political doctrine. For Foucault, this is not a phenomenon that is conceived in 1970s Chile under Pinochet, or indeed in the 1980s in the US under Reagan and the UK under Thatcher. Foucault makes the case that the birth of neoliberalism, and consequently the birth of a new manifestation of biopolitics, comes in 1949 with the establishment of West Germany and with the debates around the constitutional formation of a political state that would have as its rationale the maintenance of a specific formation of economic liberalism. For Foucault, in his The Birth of Biopolitics lectures, West Germany sees the first manifestation of the radically economic state wherein the traditional legitimising relationship of political sovereignty and economic activity are formally reversed. How is this new state constituted in cinema? In this paper, I look at the representation of economics and power in Frankfurt, Germany’s financial hub, in the award-winning Das Mädchen Rosemarie (The Girl Called Rosemary, Rolf Thiele, Roxy Films, 1958). Thiele’s satirical film, a hybrid ‘musical tragedy’, attempts to find images and sounds to register the changing nature of power in the West Germany of the ‘economic miracle’. In its focus on Frankfurt, and in its formal complexity, it offers a pioneering yet accessible engagement with the difficulties of constituting a ‘financial aesthetic’.

Paper for the Political Screen conference, LSE/UCL/University of London Screen Studies Group, 19-20 June 2015